Turtledroppings.com – Maryland Football And Basketball Blog

First and foremost I don’t claim to have any inside knowledge of the Derby.  I’m an average horse bettor on my best day, and I have a lot more stories of woe than of triumph at the track.  So maybe I’m not even average.  At any rate I feel horse racing is a sport so deeply ingrained in our states history that every Marylander should have an opinion on the Derby (the second most important horse race behind the Preakness of course!).  So here is mine.  Please read at your own risk.

Before we get into my pick, let’s look at who we should be cheering for, Homeboykris is a Maryland bred, and therefore should be the number 1 rooting interest of anyone who follows this blog.  He was bred in Baltimore County by David and JoAnn Hayden.  There is a nice article about them in today’s Baltimore Sun (Here).  What I love most about this time of year is the story of the people behind the horses.  Horse Racing epitomizes the American Dream.  Sure some people are born into it and have all the money and resources that they need (for better or worse also part of our Country), but others seek out the success by hard work and luck.  I can own a successful race horse, you can own a successful racehorse, but neither of us will own a Football, Baseball, or Basketball team.  It’s the sport of Kings, yet it’s within everyone’s reach.

Anyway, enough babble.  On to my pick.  I think today is the day Todd Pletcher finally ends his Susan Lucci esk run of bad luck.  Speaking of Susan Lucci, has anyone ever profited so much off of never winning anything?  Think about it, if she wins an Emmy in 1978 who knows about her?  Now she’s a pop culture fixture.  But back to the horses.  Since today is going to be Pletcher’s day, let’s look at his horses:

Super Saver is going off at 7-1 with jockey Calvin Borel

Devil May Care is going off at 11-1 with jockey John Velazquez

Mission Impazible is going off at 24-1 with jockey Rajiv Maragh

Discreetly Mine is going off at 41-1 with jockey J. Castellano

I think we can toss out the last two.  Don’t get me wrong, they can certainly win, but we are looking at the best bang for the buck, which leads us to Super Saver and Devil May Care.  Between these two horses, I like Calvin Borel as my jockey.  So If I were at Church Hill Downs today, I think I’d put my money on Super Saver.  We’ll say a 10$ across the board bet.  Obviously an exacta bet would be fun to, but I can’t even think of what to do for that.  Maybe we’ll go the lazy route and do a Super Saver-All exacta box, that’s going to set the wallet back a bit, but if it pans out, it will be a story for the ages.  Heck with as many horses in the Derby any Exacta is going to be a nice payout.

So there you have it.  I’m on the books for Super Saver.  Let’s see how that pans out later today.

Extra Droppings:

I’ve already sent him a text saying as much but there is a certain writer on this blog who should seriously consider doing a Homeboykris wager.  Not to tell anyone what to do but if there was a Maryland bred horse in the Derby called Homeboybob, I know what I’d be doing!

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 1st, 2010 at 9:50 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.